So everybody’s been talking about the whole blogs vs. magazines issue and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot.

I subscribe to a lot of magazines – Elle, Bazaar, Nylon, British Vogue, Jalouse, Glamour, Teen Vogue – and I regularly read others like In Style and (shamefully) Cosmo.

I also read a lot of blogs, at least 40. (Thank god for Bloglovin)

What I look for is inspiration for my life. I follow the runway shows during Fashion Week/Month on NYMag.com and Style.com, so I’m not looking for anyone to show me what happened on the runways. Also, while I appreciate fashion as art, that’s not so much my interest.

Editors and fashion critics seem to be upset that people are turning to blogs because bloggers have no experience from which to judge beyond their personal preferences, and because editors believe that bloggers are being bought off by designers. (See here, especially the last two paragraphs)

(Wanna hear more?)

First, this graphic from this article pretty much sums up how the “bought off” argument is bull:

Sure, publicists could “plant” stories with blogs like the first article suggests, but isn’t that how publicity works? Don’t they give similar stories to magazines? Magazines just suffer because they’re monthly as opposed to instant.

Also, ad sales. I always feel betrayed when I try products I see mentioned in articles because they’re basically ads, the editors just keep pushing new products, their advertisers are also the people they’re supposedly writing so objectively about. Fat chance.

But here’s the part that matters to me. You may have noticed a magazine missing from my subscription list – American Vogue. I have to say it is one of my least favorite magazines out there. First of all, the editorials always seem to be full runway looks – head to toe one designer. I’ve usually seen those looks already since I follow along during Fashion Week (from a distance, but I do my best), so it’s not interesting to look at pictures of some girl jumping against a gray background wearing the same thing I’ve already seen. The next problem has to do with cost, almost everything in Vogue is very, very expensive. One of the things that made me decide to subscribe to British Vogue is this feature they run called “More Dash than Cash” and it’s a DIY spread of sorts, re-purposing old pieces as well as modifying things, there’s nothing like that in American Vogue, it’s all expensive with nothing beyond the designers inspiration (which is good unless you’ve already seen the pictures from the runway).

Maybe I’m still to young for Vogue since I don’t have an adult budget and I don’t work at an office yet, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not subscribing.

I like other magazines because they have more inspirational editorials and features. I don’t mean things like “Runway to Real Way” because I can figure that out on my own, but often their features are more practical and original. Cosmo’s sex tips may be absurd, but they know they’re dressing real people and they mix trends with accessible things.

Most of the blogs I read are outfit blogs, a girl takes pictures of herself and posts them. It’s really interesting to see what other people are wearing and it’s much more inspiring than the designer looks Vogue shows, because so much of the interesting in those pictures comes from the incredible work of the designer, which I can’t afford. These girls are usually students on small budgets like me and they re-wear pieces like normal people. Even if I don’t have the same look as these girls and I’m not getting the freebies some of them get, I connect more with them than magazines.

Magazines are failing, we all know that. I buy them all the time in airports and drugstores and I have my subscriptions, but with the internet, they’re becoming more and more obsolete. Almost every industry seems to be struggling with the same problem, but I don’t know if magazines can survive a transition to the internet – just like newspapers… It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years.

So here are some of my favorite fashion blogs, just to wrap things up:

Like this:

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One response to this post.

I’ve always enjoyed the personal feel of blogs… especially the ones who I’ve commented back and forth with. It’s so much more inspirational when someone you feel like you know personally is doing something you admire, as opposed to a magazine print; it seems more tangible

thanks for the link <3 I'm gonna add this article to the bottom of my blog :)